What is Deontology?, Part Two: Reasons to Act

Gerald F. Gausa

Part One of this essay considered familiar ways of characterizing deontology, which focus on

the notions of the and the right. Here we will take up alternative approaches, which stress the type of reasons for actions that are generated by deontological theories. Although some of these alternative conceptualizations of deontology also employ a distinction between the good and the right, all mark the basic contrast between deontology and teleology in terms of reasons to act.

1. Deontology as a Distinctive Ethical Response

Teleology, it will be recalled, is commonly defined as a theory in which the only right-making properties are good-promoting properties, while deontology is characterized by any other theory.

We saw in Part One, however, that it is difficult to distinguish good-promoting rightness from other right-making properties. This problem stems from the common characterization of all worthy, desirable, or normatively favorable properties as good. If we cannot adequately distinguish them, perhaps the most familiar method of characterizing deontology is unhelpful.

One way to solve this problem is to develop a specific characterization of goodness or , so that we have conceptual room to speak of what is right but not good-promoting.

a Journal of Value Inquiry, vol. 35 (2001): 179-193.

Another way, suggested by H.A. Prichard, is to distinguish between the good and the right in

terms of the directives they yield: the good attracts our desires while the right tells us what we

must do. A different proposal for solving this problem has recently been advanced by Phillip

Pettit and others. It retains a very broad conception of value of goodness, covering the full range

of the normative, and then characterizes teleology and deontology as different ways of responding to value. According to Pettit, a consequentialist believes that “the proper way to respond to any values recognized is to promote them: that is, in every choice set to select the

option with prognoses that mean it is the best gamble with those values.”1 In contrast:

The deontological approach takes a certain universal value — say, the respecting of such

and such rights — as given and argues that institutions should be shaped in a way that bears

witness to this value, honoring it punctiliously in the treatment they give to different human

beings. In particular, institutions should be shaped to honour the value even if this means,

as a result of various side-effects, that there is less of the value overall: even if it means that

in general other agents respect people’s rights less well than they might have been brought

to.2

In a similar vein, S.I. Benn distinguished responding to value by maximizing or promoting it

from respecting it. As Benn argued, someone who professes to value, say, a great art work, but

saw no reason to refrain from ridiculing it or using it to weigh down garbage, would not be

respecting the

value.3 If to respect something is to give “appropriate consideration or recognition to some

feature” of it in our deliberations about what to do, it seems inappropriate to treat a valued work

thus, and so is disrespectful.4

This view of deontology avoids making a basic distinction between good or value

properties and other, non-good, right-making, properties. The distinction between teleology and

deontology is not about two sorts of right-making considerations, but two different responses to the same property — value. The distinction between teleology and deontology is located in the

sphere of our reasons for action: specifically, the opposition of promoting and honoring or

respecting reasons.

2. Respect for Persons

This is certainly an insight. However, the worry about this proposal as a general way of

distinguishing deontology from teleology is that deontologists typically do not understand promotion and respect to be two different ways of responding to the same things, but different ways of responding to different things. Writes Benn:

A contrast familiar in the philosophical literature is that between deontological theories of

, with their corresponding reasons for action, and teleological theories and their

corresponding reasons. I shall work with a related but somewhat different distinction,

between reasons of respect and reasons of concern, the former being person-centered, the

latter value-centered. Reasons of concern look primarily to the good consequences of an

action, to whether it will bring about or preserve some valued and valuable state of affairs,

sustain some valued and valuable activity, or promote the survival and well-being of some

valued and valuable object. Such objects, which I call axiotima (things to be valued), may

be animate or inanimate.5

Although Benn allowed that in some cases we might distinguish respecting a value from

promoting it, his position was that, by and large, maximization is the appropriate response to

valued objects. However, while values are normally best promoted, persons are to be respected.

“Person-centered reasons have to do with principles, such as freedom, , equal respect for a person’s rights, and fidelity to truth inasmuch as we are committed to these principles in our dealings with any other person, simply in of that person being a person....The notion of a natural person is fundamental to such principles.”6 Our reasons for action differ, argued Benn,

because they are based on different sorts of moral objects.

It seems, then, that deontologists distinguish different responses to ethical properties

because, at the heart of their view, fundamental differences between types of ethical properties

mandate different responses from us. A unifying element of most contemporary deontological

theories, and one sense in which they are all Kantian, is a commitment to respect for persons:

our ethical response to persons is held to be qualitatively different than our ethical response to

things.7 Confronting valuable things, the proper response is to promote them, and maximize the goodness in the world that results from them. When confronting persons the proper response is respect and restraint; to act on principles or rules that indicate, in our dealings with such creatures, we are not free to pursue good-promoting projects without restraint. Thus the idea that we are to treat persons not simply as means to the production of value but as ends. Given the wide acceptance of this idea in recent ethics, it can be argued that most moral theories qualify as deontological. Will Kymlicka provides a case that plausible versions of are grounded on a notion of equal consideration of interests or equal concern and respect. Kymicka thus believes that not only Kant’s and Rawls’s moral theory, but those of utilitarians such as such as R..M. Hare, , John Harsanyi, Sidgwick and even Bentham are “deontological in that they spell out an of fairness or equality for distinct individuals.”8

The idea of has a complex relation to respect for persons and deontological

ethics.9 For Kant, autonomy was necessary to account for what he calls the “realm of ends” and

the requirement that every rational being “should treat himself and all others never merely as

means but in every case as an end in himself.”10 Our autonomy is part of our rational nature; it is

both what allows us to be guided by duty and that which grounds our dignity. Autonomy thus

understood is the supposition of our status as moral agents, and grounds the idea that we are to

be respected rather than valued. For rational autonomous agents are capable of setting ends for

themselves, and it is the mutual recognition of each other as rational self-legislators that

constitutes respect. Respect, then, is the upshot of a mutual recognition of autonomous agents.

Autonomous agents do not inevitably value each others’ autonomy as a good to be promoted; they recognize autonomy as a rational status to be acknowledged. However, in recent ethical theory autonomy is typically seen as a valued state, a condition to be cherished or promoted.

Understood thus autonomy is no longer the basis of respect, but generates instead reason to promote and cherish. Consequentialist thinkers may embrace this contemporary idea of autonomy.

3. Deontology and Rules

For Benn and for Kant, treating persons with respect requires acting according to maxims or principles of a certain sort. Benn maintains that person-centered reasons are inherently principled reasons, while for Kant respect demands acting according to maxims that can be universalized. “There is, therefore, only one . It is: Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”11

Deontology is thus typically understood as upholding “Kant’s (and commonsense) view that the

moral rightness of an act is its property of being in accordance with a moral rule or principle.” 12

Right action is a function of the maxim on which it is based rather than the results which it yields. This feature of deontology has led some, such as R.B. Brandt, to equate it with formalism in ethics. According to formalists, “something besides consequences is important for rightness or wrongness; sometimes, they say, the fact that the act satisfies some formal condition, or has a certain property, such as the property of being the fulfillment of a promise, determines that it is right or wrong.”13 C.D. Broad endorsed a formalistic view according to which an act’s rightness

partly depends on its “fittingness.”14 The formal property typically associated with deontological theories is to rules, principles, or maxims.

Of course, not all deontologists explain rightness in terms of conformity to rules: some insist that recognizing the property of rightness is inherently particularistic.15 Indeed, it has been

common to distinguish act and rule deontology. Nevertheless, as a of thinking,

deontologists have focused on moral rules and principles as ways of guiding behavior.16

Deontologists are typically defenders of common , insofar as they endorse the commonsense view that morality is, first and foremost, about moral rules, and so moral is about the analysis and justification of the rules.17 One of the great attractions of

rule-based deontology over its particularistic rivals is that is provides a powerful explanation of

the core, and to some philosophers the most puzzling, features of : that it

directs us what to do rather than what should happen and that it involves side-constraints that

direct what we should do in the present situation rather than what we should have others do or

what we should do ourselves over the long run. Let us briefly consider each in turn.

4. Acts and Rules

It is widely held that deontology directs us to act rather than instruct us what must happen.18 A

deontological ethic does not provide reasons to bring about good consequences or results, but reasons to act in certain ways. According to Ross, for example:

Our duty, then, is not to do certain things which will have certain results. Our acts, at any

rate our acts of special obligation, are not right acts because they will produce certain

results — which is common to all forms of utilitarianism.... An act is not right because it,

being one thing, produces good results different from itself; it is right because it is itself the

production of a certain state of affairs. Such production is itself right, apart from any

consequence.19

This characterization of deontology, however, is somewhat misleading. Although it

distinguishes deontology from insofar as the aim of a deontological ethic is not

to produce good consequences, it does not allow us to distinguish deontology from teleology.

H.A. Prichard distinguished two varieties of teleological theories: those that would have us identify rightness with causing goodness and those that would have us identify the rightness of an act with the goodness of performing that act.20 The first variety is a type of pure

consequentialist theory: the goodness of the consequences of an act, and not the goodness of the

act itself, determines its rightness. An alternative, however, is to say that the rightness of doing

something derives from the goodness of the act itself. So although the rightness of an act is not

derivative of the goodness of its consequences, its rightness is still derivative of its goodness,

thus making the criterion of rightness teleological. Thus if the basis of the reason to do

something is to bring about the good state of affairs in which the act occurred, Prichard would still see this as teleological, though non-consequentialist. As Prichard saw it, Kant, Butler, and

Price all provide examples of non-consequentialist teleological theorists. Although today Kant is inevitably seen as the exemplar of a deontologist, Prichard pointed to a continuing problem with a simple deontological reading of Kant. According to a plausible reading of Kant:

Kant’s main mistake ... lies in representing moral goodness as the basis of duty. The truth

is, Kant is guilty of an inversion. Whereas, in fact, to arrive at the idea that certain acts are

morally good, we must already, and so independently, have the idea that there are acts

which are duties, Kant is maintaining that to arrive at the latter idea we must already, and so

independently, have the former.21

If it is not simply my duty to act, but to act from a sense of duty, because such action is the only

thing that is good in itself, it seems that the notion of duty presupposes the concept of

goodness.22 If an act is right just because it manifests the goodness of conscientiousness, the

good is prior to the right insofar as the right is that which expresses the good.

Leaving aside the difficult problem of interpreting Kant, Prichard is correct that a theory is not deontological simply because it is not consequentialist. A theory is not deontological just because the theory maintains that the moral rightness of an act is not implied by the goodness of the state of affairs it causes. If the rightness of doing something derives simply from producing the good state of affairs that the action occurred, the theory would still be teleological. Putting

the basic claim of deontologists in a way that avoids Prichard’s point, we can say that for a deontologist, a person’s reason to perform an act is independent of the goodness or desirability of

the state of affairs that occurs because the person performed the action. It is this sort of claim

that seems irrational to teleologists such as Hastings Rashdall, who understood rational action as

that which, necessarily, aims to bring about desired states of affairs. How can we recommend

doing something if the state of affairs obtaining because of the action is not in some way good,

and the world is not in some way better off now than it was, at least insofar as it was good that

someone acted in that way? How can it be rational to do what does not do any good? As Ralph

Barton Perry quipped, “[i]t is certainly a doubtful compliment to the right to deny that it does not of itself do good.”23

Underlying the teleologist’s puzzlement about the rationality of deontology is an

instrumentalist theory of reason. Developed by Hobbes and later British empiricists, this theory

has given rise to a variety of specifications. Some versions, following Hume, contend that all rational action is intended to satisfy desires; others put the point in terms of satisfying

preferences. The core idea is that an individual is rational insofar as her actions promote her

ends or purposes.24 Rule following, however, suggests an alternative mode of rational action.

As Benn stressed, particular acts stand in a token-to-type relation to rules.25 Someone’s reason to

act in some way is that it instantiates a certain type of action. Let is say, then, that a person has a

reason of fidelity to act in some way if she accepts some , principle, or rule that requires or

prohibits a type of action, and the specific act is an instance of the type. Such rule-following is

in not particular to deontological moral theory: it is perfectly general feature of what is involved

in acting on rules. Language, games, and the law all exemplify the mode of action regulation.

H.L.A. Hart, who certainly was not a deontologist, recognized that in “any large group general

rules, standards and principles” are the primary mode of regulating social life.26 The rules

identify general classes of action and require or prohibit particular acts falling under the general

descriptions. If so, then the supposedly problematic feature of deontology, that our reasons to act

do not derive from the goodness of the states of affairs brought about, is a feature of rule

following itself: the correctness of our action under a rule is not implied by the goodness or

desirability of the resulting state of affairs. This is not to say that consequences do not matter and

cannot override rules; it indicates only that the correctness of actions is often evaluated without

reference to the goodness of the state of affairs that result. Far from being a puzzling

irrationality, this feature of deontology is fundamental to rule-governed life.

5. Deontology and Side-constraints

Not only is deontological ethics about the rightness of acts in a way that cannot be captured by the goal of bringing about worthy states of affairs, deontological systems direct the agent to what

she should do rather than what she should make it the case that is done by her and others. If there

is a deontic prohibition on killing, this shows that you, qua agent, have a strong moral reason not

to kill. It does not imply that you have a strong moral reason to prevent others from killing, or to

minimize the killing in the world. We do not take satisfaction of the deontic obligation or duty

as itself something to be maximized.27 This is part of what is meant by saying that deontic

morality is one of side constraints.28

This too strikes many philosophers as irrational, or at least paradoxical.29 asks: “How can there be a reason not to twist someone’s arm which is not equally a reason to prevent his arm from being twisted by someone else?”30 A number of recent philosophers have tried to make sense of this feature of deontic constraints by claiming that they provide agent- relative or agent-centered reasons for action.31 According to Nagel: “Deontological

constraints...[are] reasons not to treat others in certain ways. They are not impersonal claims

derived from the interests of others, but personal demands governing one’s relations with

others.”32 Thus, as he rightly sees it, “deontological reasons have their full force against your

doing something — not just against its happening.”33 Some philosophers account for this by depicting deontic restrictions as agent-relative values: a person has an agent-relative value, we can say, if only because that person happens to value, or be committed to the value does she has a reason to pursue it. On this view, a deontic restraint is a personal disvaluing by you of you doing a certain sort of act. This is clearly inadequate: it would make deontic restraints akin to personal projects or likings which are reasons for you but not for others because they stem from your special commitments or inclinations, instead of the impersonal demands on actions that they are. If, as many philosophers have suggested, the Ten Commandments are an exemplar of deontological morality, it seems odd indeed to conceive of them as issuing agent-relative reasons to act.

Nagel rightly sees that deontic requirements are more than mere agent-relative valuings.

Nevertheless, he insists that they are:

agent-relative reasons which depend not on the aims or projects of the agent but on the

claims of others....[T]he relative reason does not come from an aim or project of the

individual agent, for it is not conditional on what the agents wants. Deontological

restrictions, if they exist, are mandatory and may not be given up like personal ambitions or

commitments.34

Nagel finds this combination of impersonality and agent-relativity especially puzzling. On his

complex account, the deontic restraint against, say, you breaking a person’s arm results from a

combination of the impersonal disvalue of the pain that is caused and the special importance to you of that you cause. Your status as the cause of the harm becomes, as it were, an

“intensifying beam,” giving you an especially strong reason not to harm others. That you caused the harm thus adds to the reasons implied by the impersonal disvalue of harm, providing you with an especially strong reason not to cause the pain.

This seems a complex and counterintuitive way to account for deontic restrictions. As Eric

Mack points out, it locates your reasons for honoring the restrictions in the wrong place: your

reasons not to harm others stems from the way your own perspective amplifies the harm you do to others.35 But surely the proper account of the deontic reason is not that somehow harming

others is especially bad from your perspective, but that to harm others is to violate an impersonal

rule or principle. It is prima facie wrong for anyone to harm others. Deontic restraints are, in the

requisite sense, impersonal and agent-neutral, not agent-relative. However, they are not impersonal valuings of states of affairs nor are they personal amplifications of impersonal disvaluings. They are actions required or prohibited by impersonal rules. To see an action as falling under a rule or principle is different from seeing as good the state of affairs in which that action occurs or which it causes. A basic feature of rule behavior is that the general rule guides your specific decisions; being guided by a rule does not imply the project of promoting, much less maximizing, the following of the rule. Even if the justification of the rule is to achieve a goal, when someone’s action is guided by the rule, it is guided by the relevance of the token-type relation, not on the efficiency of the person’s actions as a way to achieve the goal.

Suppose, however that, despite all its problems, we accept the idea that deontic reasons are types of personal valuings or amplifications of impersonal value, that deontic obligations and

duties are agent-relative reasons that somehow emanate from our own perspective and personal relations. If we did accept this view of deontic restrictions, we could make sense of one feature of the notion of side-constraints: that an agent is not be committed to the project of ensuring that all other people satisfy the restraint. Our concern is with what we do, not what others do.

However, the characterization of deontic reasons as agent-relative values leaves unexplained a second feature of deontic restraints: they do not imply reason to maximize in our lives their overall satisfaction. If deontic restrictions emanate from something valuable or important to our lives or personal relations in acting in a particular way, it would see manifestly irrational for us to act that way today, knowing full well that, as a result, we will not be able to act that way as much tomorrow. Yet deontic requirements often imply this. Suppose that as an atheist, I have a duty to oppose religious superstition whenever I am confronted by it; and suppose that if I oppose it today I will be fired from the university, and unable effectively oppose it in the future.

As a moral agent, I have to weigh up a number of values and concerns when deciding whether to live up to my duty and oppose superstition today; however, what is crucial for the deontologist is that the mere fact that over the long run I will have less opportunity to act on my duty does not show that I do not have reason to act on it today. This seems irrational if acting on this duty is an agent-relative valuing; if, however, it is a rule-governed response to confronting certain situations, the relevance of the rule to the situation explains why regardless of the net costs in terms of honoring the duty, I have a reason to be oppose religious superstition now. My present act instantiates the general rule. That is my reason for performing it.

6. Deontology as the Morality of Modernity

To maintain that we have a reason to act in some way just because so acting instantiates a rule,

principle or maxim that instructs us to do so implies that our reason to act does not depend

simply on our goals, values, or desires. As Prichard stressed, deontic reasons are imperatival rather than attractive: they instruct us to perform our duties because performance is required, not because we find the action attractive. It is relevant that “[t]he term ‘deontology’ derives from the

Greek words deon (duty) and logos (science).”36 In the broadest sense, then, an ethical theory is

deontological if it constitutes a science of duty and obligations. As Charles Fried says, “the

whole domain of the obligatory, the domain of duty, [is] the domain of deontology as opposed to the domain of the good.”37 Thus whereas teleology is the science of what is good and worthy,

deontology is the science of duty and obligation.

Charles Larmore has argued that in this expansive sense deontological ethics is the

distinctively modern view of ethics: deontologists understand ethics as juristic, issuing demands

or imperatives regarding what we must do.38 Following Sidgwick, Larmore contrasts this modern conception of ethics to the view of the ancients, according to which the good is the foundation of ethics.39 Referring to Sidgwick, he says:

If the notion of right is replaced by that of good at the foundations of ethics...then the moral

ideal will no longer be imperative, but rather attractive. His point was that ethical value

may be defined either as what is binding upon an agent, whatever may be his wants or

desires, or as what an agent would in fact want if he were sufficiently informed about what

he desires. In the first view, the notion of right is fundamental, in the second the notion of

good.40

As Sidgwick saw it, “[a]ccording to the Aristotelian view — which is that of Greek philosophy

generally, and has been widely taken in later times — the primary subject of ethical investigation is all that is included under the notion of what is good for man or desirable for man; all that is reasonably chosen or sought by him, not as a means to some ulterior end, but for itself.”41

Ancient ethics then was truly teleological, a science of ends; it concerned what a person properly desires or what a proper, virtuous, person, desires, or finds attractive. In contrast, modern ethics concerns what we must do — what we ought to do even if we do not desire it.42

It would be an exaggeration to claim that, in this sense of the term, we are all deontologists

now. We are presently witnessing revival of virtue theory, which seems to advance an

understanding of ethics as attractive. Nevertheless, the upshot of the analyses by Sidgwick and

Larmore is that modern ethics is fundamentally deontological. First and foremost, proponents of

modern ethical systems are devoted to explaining what we have duties to do, what is right and

wrong, what rights we have, and what can be demanded of us regardless of what we desire or

seek.43 As Rashdall and Sidgwick realized, this is no less true of consequentialist than it is of

Kantian views.44 Mill was explicit that utilitarianism too is a theory about moral rightness, and what actions a person has a duty to do, and so can be demanded of one:

This seems the real turning point between of the distinction between morality and simple

expediency. It is part of the notion of Duly in every one of its forms, that a person may

rightfully be compelled to fulfil it. Duty is a thing which may be exacted from a person, as

one exacts a debt. Unless we think it may be exacted from him, we do not call it a duty....

There are other things, on the contrary, which we wish people to do, which we like or

admire them for doing, perhaps dislike or despise them for not doing, but yet admit that

they are not bound to do; it is not a case of moral obligation.45

This is a crucial point. Utilitarianism too is a science of duties. Moralities justifying imperatival

notions of right and wrong are part and parcel of the modern condition, in which we constantly

confront others whom we do not know, and who typically entertain notions of what is good and

desirable that differ markedly from our own. Our moral relations with such strangers must be

centered on what actions and forbearances we owe each other and, as Mill says, we can exact

from each other. Thus the notions of right, wrong, duty, and obligation become the core of

ethical life. Seen against this background, neo-Aristotelian is a rejection of

modernity rather than a solution to its problems. It is impossible to see how the ethical life of

modern, pluralistic communities can be regulated by shared understandings of what is desirable and what attracts our wills.

Although, as Sidgwick realized, modern ethics does not forsake inquiry into the “Good or

Well-being of Man,” such an investigation becomes part what Sidgwick called “Private

Ethics.”46 In a similar vein, Peter Strawson distinguished social morality from individual ideals.

Individuals, he tells us, construct personal ideals, “pictures of ideal forms of life.”47 Much of our ethical thinking is about such ideals: what sort of life is best? What really makes life worth living? In the modern world, the study of ends is a study of personal ideals. Strawson contrasts such personal ends to social morality, the demands made on us by our fellows. Again, the point is that the ethical life of our society is inherently deontological, being focused on the “science of duty.”48

If this is so, however, Prichard’s criticism of teleological theories takes on increased

importance. As we have seen, teleologists such as Rashdall criticized deontology as irrational

because of the claim made by deontologists that right action is not intended to promote any good.

Prichard, however, turns the tables on this common complaint, maintaining that the problem of teleologists and their fixation on the good is that they are unable to account for the imperatival reasons that characterize duties. If, as Sidgwick suggests, all modern morality, including modern teleology, is imperatival, the upshot of Prichard’s critique is the unsuitability of teleology as a modern ethical theory. Its very attraction, an intimate connection between rational action and promoting goodness, renders it unable to adequately account for our duty to promote the good, whether we are attracted to it or not.

7. Conclusion

Because the idea of deontological ethics has been understood in so many ways, a number of different moral theories can be described as “deontological.” We have examined ten influential ways in which the notion of deontology has been understood:

(1) as an ethical theory in which the right does not maximize production of the good;

(2) as an ethical theory admitting considerations of justice;

(3) as a moral theory that advances absolute moral commands or prohibitions;

(4) as an ethical theory such as Prichard’s in which duties and obligations are justified

independently of the concept of the good;

(5) as an ethical theory such as Gauthier’s moral contractualism, in which the concept of the

right is not defined in terms of a substantive notion of the good;

(6) as an ethical theory according to which our values and conceptions of the good

presuppose justified moral principles;

(7) as an ethical theory which holds that we have reasons to respect as well as to promote

value;

(8) as an ethical theory founded on, or giving a large role to, the concept of respect for

person;

(9) as an ethical theory in which gives pride of place to moral rules;

(10) as an imperatival ethical theory.

No theory is deontological in all ten senses. The decalogue fails to be deontological if we take senses (6), (7) or (8) as definitive of deontology. Kant’s theory is not deontological under sense

(7), and if Prichard is right, Kant’s theory is also fails to qualify under conceptualization (4).

Gauthier’s contractualism is deontological under conceptualizations (1), (2), (5), (9) and (10), but not under (3), (4), (6), (7) or (8); Rawls’s contractualism is deontological under (1), (2), (5), (6),

(9) and (10). Ross’s intuitionism qualifies as deontological if we take as our test (1), (2) (4) or

(10), but not if we employ the tests implied by (3), (7) or (8). Rashdall’s utilitarian theory is actually a form of deontology under conceptualizations (2) and (10) and rule utilitarian theories are deontic under conceptualizations (1), (9) and (10). Even Bentham’s theory is a form of deontology under conceptualization (10) and, if we are to believe Kymlicka (7).

Apart from revealing the striking diversity in understandings of deontology, our examination also shows that the current conviction among many philosophers that consequentialism or teleological ethics is obviously rational and suitable to modern society, while deontological ethics is obviously irrational, is manifestly wrong. A deontic, imperatival, morality is the morality of modernity and, as Prichard convincingly argued, teleologists have great difficulty showing how their attractive conception of ethics, that we desire the good, can yield an imperatival “ought.” Deontological rule following involves no more irrationality than

speaking a language, playing a game, or having good manners; it is to let our actions be guided by rules and principles rather than solely by outcomes. The really interesting question, perhaps, is why so many modern moral philosophers remain so committed to the one-sided view of reason and morality that we call consequentialism.

Notes

1. Philip Pettit, “Consequentialism” in Peter Singer, ed., A Companion to Ethics (Oxford:

Blackwell, 1991), p. 233.

2. Philip Pettit, The Common Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 303. For a similar understanding of deontology, see Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1981), p. 499.

3. Stanley I. Benn, “Personal Freedom and ” in Gray Dorsey, ed.,

Equality and Freedom: International and Comparative Jurisprudence (Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.:

Oceana Publication, 1977), vol. II, p. 414. See also Gerald F. Gaus, Value and Justification: The

Foundations of Liberal Theory (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p.

138.

4. See Stephen L. Darwall, “Two Kinds of Respect,” Ethics vol. 88 (October 1977).

5. S. I. Benn, A Theory of Freedom (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 7-8.

6. Ibid.

7. See , Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Lewis White Back, trans.

(Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill. 1959), p. 47; Roger J. Sullivan, Immanuel Kant’s Moral

Theory (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press), pp. 195ff . Cf. Benn, A Theory of

Freedom, p. 240; Alan Donagan, The Theory of Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1977), pp. 65-66; Charles Fried, Right and Wrong (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University

Press, 1978), pp. 9, 29; Jeffrey Reiman, Justice and Modern Moral Philosophy (New Haven,

Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990), pp. 123-24; Eric Mack “Deontic Restrictions Are Not

Agent-Relative Restrictions,” & Policy, vol. 15 (Summer 1998).

8. Will Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community and Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p.

26.

9. See Jerome B. Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral

Philosophy (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

10. Kant, op. cit., p. 52.

11. Ibid., p. 39. See Onora Nell [O'Neill], Acting on Principle: An Essay on

(New York: Columbia University Press, 1975).

12. Kurt Baier, The Moral Point of View: A Rational Basis for Ethics (New York: Random

House, 1965), p. 97.

13. R.B. Brandt, Value and Obligation (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961), pp. 131-

32.

14. C.D. Broad, Five Types of Ethical Theory (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1930), p.

278; W.D. Ross, Foundations of Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press., 1939), pp. 51ff.

15. See Jonathan Dancy, “An Ethic of Prima Facie Duties” in Peter Singer, ed., A Companion

to Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), pp. 219-229.

16. See John H. Muirhead, Rule and End in Morals (Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press,

1969), p. 3.

17. See Bernard Gert, Morality: A New Justification of the Moral Rules (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1988), pp. 9-10; Donagan, op. cit., p. 7.

18. See Christine M. Korsgaard, Creating the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge, England:

Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 291; Eric Mack, “Negative Causation and the Duty of

Rescue” in Edward Regis, Jr., ed., Gewirth’s Ethical Rationalism (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1984), p.149; Nell [O'Neill], op. cit., p. 50; Reiman, op. cit., p. 192.

19. W.D. Ross, The Right and the Good (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930), pp. 46-7

20. H.A. Prichard, “Moral Obligation” in Moral Obligation: Essays and Lectures (Oxford:

Clarendon, 1949). p. 142.

21. Ibid., p. 156.

22. Kant, op. cit., p. 9. See Nell [O'Neill], op. cit., 97ff; Ross, The Right and the Good, pp. 5ff.

23. Ralph Barton Perry, Realms of Value (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1954), p. 107.

24. See Gerald F. Gaus “Why All Welfare States (Including Laissez-Faire Ones) Are

Unreasonable,” Social Philosophy & Policy, vol. 15, no. 2 (June, 1998).

25. Benn, A Theory of Freedom, p. 24. See also Frederick Schauer, Playing by the Rules

(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 54ff, 72, 77 & 113.

26. H.L.A Hart, The Concept of Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), p. 121.

27. F.M. Kamm, Morality, Mortality, vol. II: Rights, Duties, and Status (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1996), chs. 8-10; Mack, “Deontic Restrictions Are Not Agent-Relative

Restrictions,” pp. 62-63; cf. Alan Gewirth, Reason and Morality (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1978), p. 216.

28. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), pp. 28ff;

Nozick, Philosophical Explanations, p. 494; Korsgaard, op. cit., p. 275.

29. Korsgaard, op. cit., pp. 294-95.

30. Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 178.

31. Samuel Sheffler, The Rejection of Consequentialism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982);

Elizabeth Anderson, Values in Ethics and Economics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University

Press, 1993), pp. 73-79.

32. Nagel, op. cit., p. 176..

33. Ibid., p. 177.

34. Ibid., pp. 175 & 178, quoted in Mack, “Deontic Restrictions Are Not Agent-Relative

Restrictions,” p. 72.

35. See Mack, op. cit.

36. Robert Olson, “Deontological Ethics” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Paul Edwards, ed.. (London: Macmillan, 1967).

37. Fried, op. cit., p. 9n.

38. Ibid., pp. 11-12.

39. See , The Methods of Ethics, 7th ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1962), pp. 105-6; Sidgwick, Outlines of the for English Readers

(London: Macmillan, 1925), pp. 1-10.

40. Charles Larmore, The Morals of Modernity (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University

Press, 1996), p. 20.

41. Sidgwick, Outlines of the History of Ethics, p. 2.

42. Cf. Prichard’s “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?” in his Moral Obligation:

Essays and Lectures (Oxford: Clarendon. 1949), p. 13.

43. See Gerald F. Gaus, Social Philosophy (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1999), ch.1. See also

Joel J. Kupperman, The Foundations of Morality (London: Allen and Unwin, 1983), ch. 1.

44. See Hastings Rashdall, The Theory of (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1907), vol. I, pp. 102ff.

45. J.S. Mill, Utilitarianism in John Gray, ed., On and Other Essays (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1991), p. 184.

46. Sidgwick, Outlines of the History of Ethics, p. 3

47. See P.F. Strawson, “Social Morality and Individual Ideal,” Philosophy, vol. 36 (January

1961).

48. Ibid.